


where the rims have ridges

by Civillain



Category: One Piece
Genre: Gen, Nakamaship, POV Outsider, concept of heroism, implied/speculated reincarnation, though it's ambiguous
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-18
Updated: 2019-12-18
Packaged: 2021-02-26 00:41:58
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,699
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21754693
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Civillain/pseuds/Civillain
Summary: Everything everyone does is in their own self-interest."I like your hat," she calls out quietly.And the change is instantaneous.He stops where he stands, a hand on his head and his knees still bent to take another step, and turns to look over his shoulder.There's a moment of silence where he says nothing, just peering at her with squinted eyes, before:"Thanks!" he beams.His smile is wide and unchecked, so wide that it might make his cheeks ache. He doesn't have laugh lines, but the way he smiles makes her imagine that he's spent his whole life grinning like that, warmly and brightly, so sincere and upfront that the breath gets punched right out her lungs.Sometimes, there are people close to exceptions.But not quite.20 years apart, and two people that don't make any sense.
Relationships: Monkey D. Luffy & Mugiwara Kaizoku | Strawhat Pirates
Comments: 3
Kudos: 149
Collections: A Collection of Beloved Inserts





	where the rims have ridges

He has a straw hat. 

It's not tattered; not old, but it looks worn and well-cared for, seams neatly trimmed and visible sewing lines where there must've been rips. It glows a warm yellow in the sunlight, casting little shadows onto the ground from where the rims have ridges. 

It's also dirty on one side, grime and dust sticking to the edges as though the man has been sleeping on his sides in the streets, getting his hat grubby and mucky and lathered with filth. Something as unclean as that is a sign of poverty—a taboo in the kingdom—and punishable by circumstantial death. 

But it's also the most glorious thing she's ever seen, because:

The man wearing it stands in the midst of a roiling crowd, his head held high and proud, a clenched fist bloody and splattered with red. He looks magnificent to her in that moment, his figure unswayed by the screams and terror that have already rooted her to the spot.

Under him is a noble.  
(The one that just tried to run her through for daring to stand close.)

"Thank you," she whispers to him, and it's hushed—but it carries through the throngs of shouting and shrieking; and the man with the straw hat turns around, his scowl hardly softening when he sees her. His eyes are intense, dark and fierce, and it feels like there's an insurmountable gap between them that she'll never be able to even breach.

But then he smiles.  
And it's not warm or sweet or kind—not even a hint of benignity. Maybe it's even a little threatening, his mouth curled almost maliciously, all his teeth bared...

...and— _oh _, she realizes,_ he didn't do that for me at all._

Taking down the lord of a kingdom is a death sentence for anybody.  
Of course he didn't risk his life for _her, _a nobody in the crowd. Why would he? She doesn't know him, he doesn't know her—they have no relation and there's no way he would save her for the hell of it. A stranger would never do that for another stranger.__

__People like that are called heroes—and they're brave, strong, her childhood's hope—_ _

__—but they also don't exist._ _

__Still, a thrill washes over her, sending tingles down to her toes, a rush to the tips of her fingers.  
He's _strong._  
(Or maybe he's just brave enough to do what no one else would ever dare to do.)

"Can you get that for me?"

She jerks back, almost getting whiplash when she looks around for anyone else he might possibly be talking to. 

"Me?" she asks. There's a hopeful lilt in her voice that even she can hear, and she cringes back at her own obvious desperation. "I..I mean yeah, sure! W-where?"

The man—actually, he's more of a boy, she decides; looking at him carefully—grins again, the same ferocity still surging in his hooded eyes.

"Aye," he says, and jumps off the unconscious noble to push his way through the hollers echoing around them. "That right over there," and he nods pointedly at a rucksack by her feet.

Ah. She hadn't even noticed that there.

She bends down into a crouch to grab it as carefully as she can, cradling it gently from the bottom with an open palm. It looks old—worn and dirty. Maybe it isn't very important? She wouldn't dare look inside, but it's extremely light—not at all like something valuable. 

One moment it's in her hand, and then the next moment it isn't. The boy-man-teen? has the neck of the sack casually tucked over his shoulder, and now there's a rueful grin on his face, a much kinder curl to his lips. "Thanks," he chuckles, fingers splayed across the crown of his hat, "I'll need this."

And then he leaps over a wide-mouthed child to the side, grabbing onto the roof of a street-vendor's shop to hoist himself up and over the wooden walls. All that's left behind is an echo of light laughter, the screams of the crowd, and the cheers of the beggars who sleep in the rain. 

But something tugs at her heart, and she feels the dissatisfaction of something _empty _settle into the pits of her guts.__

__"WAIT!" she calls out, shoving past onlookers, "WHO ARE YOU?"_ _

__

__For a while, the streets are silent, the people around her shocked quiet. But then there's the sound of a smothered laugh, the scuffling of feet, and then—_ _

__The barest glimmer of pale yellow peeks up from behind the corner, and a flash of messy black hair flops into dark eyes.  
"Me?", he asks, clearly bemused. _ _

__She feels her face flush again, the red traveling down to even her forearms; and her stomach goes taut with anxiety, but she works up the nerve to say: "Yes. Who are you?"_ _

__He opens his mouth, stifling another snicker with the back of his hand. "I'm.."_ _

__

__"Are you a_ hero?_" You saved me, though you didn't do it for me; and she holds the words on the tip of her tongue, but they never leave where they currently stay. 

For hardly a split-second, blatant alarm whips across his face.  
It looks like incredulity, the twist of his lips almost tragically changed with choler, iniquitous distaste. 

But then it passes, and something sets in his eyes, lighting up his entire face with a glowing intensity. In the sunlight, his irises shine a deep black, and the shadows cast by his hat dance above the bridge of his nose.

"Nah." he waves noncommittally at her, though his voice is _blazing _with drive, "I'm not."__

__

__

__"I'm the man who'll turn the world upside down."_ _

____

====

EXECUTION OF GOL D. ROGER

"The pirate king is dead," the newspaper reads.

It's a big deal.

She should be happy, really, since the most wanted criminal in the world is gone. That's what she wanted, right? For there to be less danger, for her own family to be safe? 

She is happy.  
A criminal is a criminal. Pirates are scum.

(But—the face plastered on the paper looks up at her with dark, dark eyes, a piercing gaze that's just _so familiar, _staring at something far-off that she'll never even be able to catch a glimpse of. So nostalgic, that sharp grin—__

__—except it isn't. Because she's never met the pirate king before, has she?)_ _

____

==

He has a straw hat.

It looks old; worn and weathered, with little careful stitches on the edges carefully done by a steady hand. 

She imagines that the hat must be very important to him, because even as he fights; throws blurring punches and hails raining jabs at the man below him, he holds onto it—fingers splayed across the bleached crown, the hat always kept pressed in place.

And then he stops.

She's startled; until she isn't, because the guy he had been fighting is done, knocked down and out on the ground.  
He—the boy with the straw hat—leaps back onto the street, lands on his two feet as graceful as a tern, and then bows his head to an old man standing to the side.

"Thank you," she hears him say, and she's curious as to why—wasn't he the one who had just gotten rid of some criminal?— but then the old man smiles like he's smiling at his grandson and pats him on the head with a shaking arm.

"It was just a bit of food from my store. You're welcome to come back anytime."

The boy grins back, warm and sweet, and nods with an eagerness that instantly endears him to her. "You're such a nice guy, old man!"

He's turned to the side, so she can only see a side-profile, his dark hair draped over the top half of his face. She cranes her neck to try and see the rest of him, but the most she can manage is a glimpse of a vaguely familiar, pale scar on his cheek. He sounds young, looks young, clearly a boy—possibly still in his mid-teens.  
Has she seen him somewhere before?

A pained groan drifts past her ears, and she whirls around in surprise to find the guy on the ground rolling over onto his back. For a moment, she thinks he's going to make a break for it.  
Instead, he lunges for the boy's ankles with outstretched fists, his expression spitefully angry, his mouth spitting dirty curses.

"Hey!" she's about to call out, _be careful— _!__

__

__But her warning goes unneeded, as the boy side-steps the lunge with a loose laugh, his sandals clicking lightly against concrete.  
As the old man to the side watches with obvious amusement, the boy—with his slim frame and thin arms— bodily _picks the other up_ and _hurls _him across the street.__

__

__..._ oh, _she thinks. _Oh. ___

__

__She's so busy being shocked that she hardly notices when the boy plods up to her, footsteps so light he could be gliding a half-inch off the ground.  
"Did you say something?" he asks. _ _

__

__He's shorter than her.  
Now that he's close up, she can see his face clearly, and he really is young. He peers up at her with squinted eyes from under dark lashes, and his stare is so open—so honest— that frankly, she feels a little charmed. _ _

__

__Then: "What's your deal?" he blurts, and the bluntness snaps her attention back, quick as a whip._ _

__"...what?"_ _

__

__"What's your deal?" he repeats, and it's only maybe rude- though there isn't a hint of nastiness in his voice._ _

__Her deal?_ _

__She thinks for a while, wondering what she could say to this chit of a boy, who stares up at her with so much simplicity that he really doesn't seem like a crook at all._ _

__

__"Why were you fighting?" she decides to ask.  
Surely he wasn't the bad one, right? The old man had been supporting him..._ _

__

__"—I wanted to."_ _

__She blinks; once, then twice, and feels the frown twitch onto her face of its own avail. "You_ wanted_ to?" she snaps back incredulously, righteous anger overtaking rational thinking, "So he didn't do anything to you?! You attacked him because you wanted to? Don't tell me, you're a damn crook too—"

"He saved me." 

The sharp interruption turns her head, and she finds the old man watching them rather reproachfully. "Don't yell at him," the old man gripes, his arms thrown up and noodling through the air, "he did nothing wrong. The rascal he tossed around was trying to kill me, the blasted pirate. Don't you dare yell at him." 

She stares back, a little perturbed, and the words take a while to properly process in her head. 

Oh, she thinks again, a tad more dumbfounded this time:  
He _saved _him.__

__Oh._ _

__

__Feeling heat rapidly creep up her face, she scowls to forcefully stave it off and flicks the boy in the forehead with the tip of her pinky.  
"You should've said that from the beginning," she tells him. "You weren't clear at all."_ _

__"He fed me yesterday though." he says in reply, and it sounds very matter-of-factly, as though his words alone are enough to even convince her that fish could fly._ _

__She wants to say something spiteful, maybe 'that has nothing to do with this," or 'your excuses make no sense, if you're lying I'll—'_ but_—  
—he peeks up at her unwarily from under his straw hat, his expression still open and ingenuous as ever, and she genuinely can't sense even a hint of deceit. Not in his gaze, not in his eyes, not in his nothing.

Oh.

Something like guilt wells up coolly in her stomach, though she recognizes it as shallow shame more than anything. She must look really daft, reprimanding a child who was only trying to protect an elderly man. 

She's about to spit out an apology, maybe eat humble pie and then backtrack the hell out of there, but then something in the boy's face twists— and that openness she had admired is suddenly gone. 

"I hear my crew," he says.  
He isn't talking to her. 

The old man nods and steps back, a hand on his back and a glimmer in the wink he sends the boy. "Come back anytime," the old man grins. 

She whirls around one last time—because the old man has closed his eyes and sighed fondly, as though there's something behind her that she can't see—

...and the boy is gone. 

(a loud thwack echos somewhere, but still in the moment, she's too confused to notice)

====

She's been taken hostage.

Ropes constrict her arms behind her back, and her legs have gone so numb with both pins and needles and cold, dark, fear that she can't even push herself up off the ground. 

"Nobody make a sound," the marine-turned robber snarls, clutching his gun with sweaty palms, "Try ta' call for help and I blow a hole through your heads."

He glares at her when she presses her face into her knees, barely managing to stifle a sob.  
Is she going to die here?

Killed by some scummy criminal?

"Relax."

The redhead by her side whispers to her, still pretty and clean as though she hadn't been whacked around by the hilt of a musket just moments before. She's in the same position, in the dark and trapped in a run-down bank, held hostage by a man who was meant to keep them safe.

Relax? How can she relax in a situation like this? Dull anger simmers like a low-rise hotpot, and the panic doesn't subside at all. Rather, it reaches an all-time high.  
What do you know, she's about to cry, how can you be so calm when we're all about to die—?!

But then she locks gazes with mischievous hazel, and the redhead winks and wiggles her hands teasingly. 

Her. _Free _, hands.__

__

__"I'm pretty nifty," the redhead snickers, probably in response to her slack-jawed shock, "—and this guy's kinda pathetic."_ _

__

__A finger pressed to her lips, the redhead ducks behind the nearest counter, dodging the occasional bullet._ _

__"WHERE ARE YOU?!" the mari—criminal bastard shrieks, blindly flailing with the musket, "GET OUT HERE OR I'LL MAKE YOUR DEATH PAINFUL!"_ _

__

__Then there's a loud bang, the splattering of blood—and the marine is down, a fist embedded in his sternum._ _

__

__"Pathetic," the redhead snickers again. She dramatically blows her knuckles like she's blowing out smoke and then grins cheekily, stepping on the marine's face as she makes her way back over to the counter.  
Grabbing at a long stick and then a heavy-looking burlap sack, the girl hums contentedly and then slings both over her shoulder, leaping up and over the other hostages to escape the dark._ _

__"Wait!" Someone calls out, desperation lacing their shout, "Free me!"_ _

__"Free me!"  
"Please!"  
Shouts and pleas echo through the vaults, but none of them even illicit a reaction, and the girl is already touching the vault's latch when somebody screams: "I'll pay you!"_ _

__The redhead goes still._ _

__

____

====

"I just needed time to get away, alright?! It's not like they were in any danger, I already made sure they were safe when I knocked the guy out."

"But-but he says you were just going to leave them there!"

"Well in the end I didn't."

"Because he _paid _you!"__

__

__The guy has a really long nose, she thinks to herself privately. It's a little weird._ _

__

__"We were waiting for you, y'know? Sanji was gonna explode! And he did! I mean I wasn't scared, not at all, but still! You said you would go in and get out but you were in there for forever! We lost Zoro, dammit, ugh! Robin's trying to find him right now!"_ _

__"It's not my fault he can't navigate across a straight line."_ _

__"HE WAS LOOKING FOR YOU!" Poor guy sounds almost hysterical._ _

__

__She shifts in her bonds and rolls back against her calves, feeling the rope wedge into her skin. She's one of the last people left over, the others already either freed by the redhead or by the Pinocchio-fraud. Is she allowed to ask for help?_ _

__"Shut up, Usopp. If you're going to be like this I'm not giving you a cent of what I earned."_ _

__"You- you never would've given me anything in the first place! Nami!"_ _

__Usopp and Nami are their names, then._ _

__

__Usopp's face contorts into something strange for a brief moment, a milder concern weaving into his frown. "Why'd you steal from the bank? It's not like you."_ _

__

__Raising an eyebrow, Nami cocks her hip and shakes her head mockingly. The air smells like citrus.  
"I didn't. I stole from the marine. Or- ex-marine. Whatever."_ _

__

__Their argument devolves into a series of slaps and scowls, and then the words leave and all that's left is mussed hair and a bruised nose, and she really does wonder when they'll be able to free her.  
"We'll have to go find Zoro, then," Usopp mutters, cradling his face, and he looks irritated, maybe even petulantly angry- and oh. Are they not friends?- but then Nami snorts, eyeing herself in a shop's window, and then turns to Usopp to muss his hair up just so they can match. _ _

__"I'm going to have to hit you in the nose now," Usopp says, darkly- but he's smiling too._ _

__

__(In the end, he doesn't. Instead he cowers behind a passerby the moment Nami takes a step forwards.)  
_ _

====

He has a straw hat.

"You're back," she says. 

He turns around to look at her, with the same red vest and the same blue shorts, and the same open expression on his face.  
There's a blank look in his eyes, impassive and a little baffled, and when he says nothing for a full minute she imagines that he's spazzed. "You oka-?"

"Who are you?"

"You..." don't remember me? We just met three days ago, and we talked. We met three days ago, you saved an old man and beat some other guy up, and you don't remember me at all? She's about to say that, and more, maybe spitefully wax poetic about how rude he's being...

But she doesn't. 

Because he's still the same, with an openness that she still admires, and with an innocence that she can't quite understand. Nor will she ever be able to explain it, because he's small and scrawny and slim, but he lifted up a man easily twice his size and tossed him around like a rag-doll, and with a confidence that would suit a world power more than it would suit someone as small as him.  
Because she knows that he wouldn't care at all- not really- just by looking at his face, at how his attention had already slipped through her fingers and dribbled away long before he even met her gaze.

"Old man!" he calls out, and there are already yards of distance between them, and then another second goes by and he's practically a _mile _away, "I'm here again! You got meat?"__

__

__She watches as the same old man from days before greets the boy with a hearty smile, and there are cracked lips and missing teeth but the smile looks_ warm._

_Didn't they just meet three days ago? ___

__

__"Did he save you for payment?" she asks._ _

__Disdain flits across the old man's face, but it's there and then it isn't, vanished like quicksilver. "No." he replies, simply._ _

__"Did he save you to repay a favor?" He got food from you, didn't he?_ _

__"No." the old man says again._ _

__"What did you give him to save you?"_ _

__"Nothing."_ _

__

__Disbelieving, she looks him squarely in the eyes, scanning him for any lies, any hint of dishonesty. There's none. It shows, in the lines of his face, in the flatness of his mouth. He's either telling the truth—or an experienced liar._ _

__"Why did he save you then?" she asks, just as flatly—keeping her voice hushed as to not let the boy hear._ _

__The old man gives her a look._ _

__Then he shakes his head and sighs, deep and heavy, the sound almost contemptuously forlorn. "People these days only do things for their own benefit, huh," he mutters, eyes cast down, raking over cracked concrete, "Always thinking about yourself—about payment, about what you can_ get_ from other people."

_So he's different? _She's about to ask, but he holds up a hand and it pauses her midway.__

__"Boy said he was hungry one day, and I gave him some food. It wasn't a favor, or something that was supposed to be a debt; I just gave it to him because he was hungry. He owed me nothing."_ _

__'He helped me for nothing in return,' goes unsaid._ _

__

__"That..doesn't..why? I don't think anyone would do that just to help out," she insists, but the old man waves off her concerns by rolling his eyes._ _

__"Ask him yourself."  
And after that, his lips are tightly sealed shut, because she can no longer even get a word out of him._ _

__

__"He's my friend," the boy tells her, holding a leg of meat to his chest. She has to match his pace as he walks away, because he walks fast for a squirt, practically moving a mile a minute._ _

__"Your friend...didn't you just meet?"_ _

__He gives her this look, a little baffled and a little blank, and she thinks he might be an airhead with how much visible confusion maps out and roots into his gaze._ _

__Then his face straightens, completely blank once again, and he shrugs. "I don't know when we met." he says. "Or where. But he's a real nice guy."_ _

__

__And it really does seem simple as that, because he doesn't elaborate. He doesn't say anything more, doesn't praise himself for doing what could obviously be hailed as a good deed, doesn't speak another word to her._ _

__She watches him leave, small figure blending into the throngs of the crowd, (there's something that sets him apart from the grey in the air) but somehow manages to track him all the way up till he disappears around a curved end, the heels of his sandals clicking one last time._ _

__When she finally reaches it, skims the brick wall with hasty hands, hasty feet; he's gone.  
The footprints stop right under a bent street-sign, but they don't go any farther than that. _ _

____

====

He has a straw hat.  
It's golden and bleached with pale yellow, rips and tears littering its crown. It's also splattered with blood.

It's the same boy again.

"You hit him," she says weakly, legs going lax under her. 

He spares her a passing glance from under his hat, a hand still fisted in the noble's collar, and says, "yeah." with all the simplicity of someone announcing their inevitable death. A near one, too, because guards are inching up behind him, weapons shaking in their grips.

"You'll die for that," she whispers, and it's hushed, but it carries through the screams and shrieks and he seems to hear it perfectly fine; because then he looks her straight in the eyes, his own wide with something she can't discern. 

Then—they narrow, and darken, and suddenly it seems like she's looking at someone else altogether. 

"No." he says. "Why would I die?"

The words are short, and they seem unreliable in the face of what's obviously set to come—but so is he.

The guards are done in an instant, sprawled across the ground in an array of bloodshed. And the boy stands above the last one, his face set in a glare, and a trickle of red dripping steadily off his fist.  
He doesn't say anything, but the message is clear. 

And the guard scampers off, not looking back even once. 

"They'll hunt you."

He stares back at her squarely in the eyes and says nothing. 

"Don't you know what you've done?!" Her chest thrums with fear, but there's more than terror there. It's something deeper, something darker—vindictive satisfaction, she realizes morbidly.  
(But isn't that justified?)

"He was about to kill you," the boy says flatly, wonderingly. 

"Y...you punched him. His guards." Her voice quavers. But not with concern. Or anger.

His brow furrows, and he wipes the blood on his hands onto his own red vest. She thinks that he's going to hit her, for a moment, because he brings his fist up to the side of his face and narrows his eyes again. 

But then he gives her another look, tucking the wet fist under his own chin, and it's clear as day that he thinks _she's _the one who's gone insane. He tips his head to the side, just enough for his dark hair to fall past his eyes and dip past the bridge of his nose. "You're strange," he mutters.__

 _ _"You're—"_ a lunatic. Crazy. A madman; except you're just a child. You're challenging the world, but you're just a kid, and you claim that you're doing this for me, who never did anything for you._ "—impossible," she finishes, and everything she had wanted to say goes unsaid. 

"You don't make any sense," she continues, and she's so frazzled that her spilling her thoughts to a stranger, a kid, doesn't even faze her. "What's your deal? I don't understand, you don't make any sense, and—and..."

"I have nothing to pay you back with."

That's what she'd been trying to get at. 

There's only silence for the longest time, and she imagines that he's furious, maybe, not being able to receive what he should clearly deserve for helping someone out. (not helping someone out—he saved her life). But then there's a quiet scuffling noise, like rubber dragging against concrete, and she lifts her eyes to find the boy shifting his feet along the ground. 

Noticing her stare, he raises an arm in what looks like surrender and sheepishly says, "I have no idea what you're talking about."

(I have no idea what you're talking about.)

(He helped me for nothing in return.)

Something gears up in her mind, twisting and pulling and it's damn confusing but she's _bewildered. _"Why did you save me?" she demands. She takes a step forward, but then quickly retracts, because that blank look of his rapidly mangles into a grim frown.__

__His eyes rake over her, every inch, and she'd be disgusted if she couldn't see the honest lack of perverseness in his gaze. Then he closes his eyes, closes off his face, and she can see his shoulders hunch and his feet drag, and suddenly he's right in front of her, the brim of his hat brushing against her chin._ _

__

__"You didn't want to die."_ _

__He doesn't say it as a question. But it's kind of one. Not really, but almost there, lost somewhere between conviction and contemplation.  
(The worst part is that she knows it's true.) _ _

__

__"I know I didn't," she chokes out, and her false bravado begins faltering in the face of such direct openness. He says nothing, but the shadows cast by his hat dance in the sun, and she remembers something else that had been buried away long ago._ _

__It's looking a gift horse in the mouth. Far beyond that, actually, because he_ saved her life,_ and possibly at the cost of his own. He's going to be chased from now on, put on a wanted list and have his face plastered in every alley, every street, with money offered for his head on a stake.  
But she asks anyways, again, because she's still scared, still angry, still that little girl who was almost killed for being in the wrong place at the wrong time— just 20 years ago. 

"Are you trying to be a _hero? _"__

 _ _It comes out as more of a spit than an inquiry. Maybe it's even spiteful, because she's_ mad_, still _mad _about things far gone and things lost, and she knows that she probably always will be. But she takes it out on him, here and now, because he's there and because he looks up at her with dark eyes so like someone else she knew.__

__

__But his face twists, screws up from a grimace to a miffed frown, and he shakes his head vehemently, almost blatantly annoyed._ _

__"No way!" he exclaims, and his refusal is so heated it startles her.  
"Who'd want to be a hero?" he scoffs, a hand pushing the brim of his hat up over the top of his head, "Being a hero is stupid. You'll never get to—"_ _

__"You saved me and didn't want_ anything_ in return," she hisses, cutting him off. She leans forwards to get up in his face, meeting blank dark eyes with a boldness she can barely muster without the tremble in her knees. "You wanted _nothing _in return. You can't tell me you weren't trying to be a hero."__

__

__But he does just that._ _

__"I wasn't."_ _

__"I just do what I want." he tells her, voice flat._ _

__His stare morphs steadily, stonily, and his lips flatten, drafting his mouth into a straight line, sharp and uncut.  
"You're a really rude lady." he says bluntly. _ _

__She can't work up a response, and really doesn't even have time to. Maybe it wouldn't have mattered anyways, because he pivots on his heel and begins to walk away, leaving the dust to kick up around her and the screams of the crowds. If she yelled for him to come back, for him to keep talking, because he makes absolutely no sense—would he even respond?_ _

__(There's just that aching in the back of her mind, that constant pressure in her lungs, and she has too many questions that have always gone unanswered.)_ _

__

__"I like your hat," she calls out quietly._ _

__

__And the change is instantaneous.  
He stops where he stands, a hand on his head and his knees still bent to take another step, and turns to look over his shoulder. _ _

__There's a moment of silence where he says nothing, just peering at her with squinted eyes, before:  
"Thanks!" he beams. _ _

__His smile is wide and unchecked, so wide that it might make his cheeks ache. He doesn't have laugh lines, but the way he smiles makes her imagine that he's spent his whole life grinning like that, warmly and brightly, so sincere and upfront that the breath gets punched right out her lungs._ _

__"Yeah," she weakly whispers._ _

__

__He must see something, or hear something in her voice, because then his face sets ardently, his eyes going wide, and he runs up to her eagerly and whips the hat off his head.  
"Have you seen it before?!" he demands. _ _

__Has she?_ _

__Looking at him now, carefully, she wonders if she really has. He's different._ _

__His eyes are brown, open and honest- and yes they're intense, but at one point they were also_ warm,_ and that makes all the difference. There's none of that distant coldness, the indifference- though that definitely was there, just a moment prior, and it's not kindness but there's something, _something _about him that's just staggeringly_ different._  
She wonders if it's because he looks softer, less intimidating, with round brown eyes and a glowing smile, where there's none of that darkness or ferocity that she had seen mixed in with bloodshed.

But...

"I think I ha—"

"Cap'n."

The boy perks up, rocking back onto his feet to greet a green-haired man.

"Hey! Zoro!" he laughs, looping a hand around the man's neck. He tugs him down into an one-armed hug, ignoring the man's indignant scowl of, "lemme go, you-" and grins merrily, plopping the hat back onto his head.

Zoro (or so she assumes) seems to give in, hiding the upturning of his lips with a peeved grimace. "We were looking for you all over, you dolt. Who told you to get lost? We were just here to stock supplies, and you went and rocketed yourself off to who knows where..."

"Ah," the boy says. "Well, how'd you find me then?"

The man says nothing. 

The boy tilts his head to the side and closes his eyes, tapping his cheek with a finger. "Oh," he suddenly says. "...Zoro, ya got lost, didn't ya?"

Zoro's cheek jumps.  
"You stupid..."

But then he seems to notice her presence, because he steadily shifts into a casual crouch, his knees only subtly bent. "Luffy," he murmurs, eyes abruptly sharp, "who's this?" 

"Her?" the boy says. "Well, she said she likes my hat!"  
The hat, she thinks bemusedly, the first thing he brings up is his hat. What happened to being a 'really rude lady?' 

"..and she also told me I'll die."

It's so fast that it happens before she can even finish a blink, a whistle in the air that ends as soon as it begins.  
The serrated sword edge against her neck presses lightly enough to just barely avoid drawing blood, and the chill that courses through her veins drenches the back of her head with ice.

And that lazy indifference in the green-haired man's eyes is gone, replaced with a dark coldness, a fierce anger—directed at her.

"Zoro." the boy says. It sounds like a command, a clipped bark— curt in a way she never could've imagined a boy like him could be. 

The sword disappears from her neck in the next instant, and she releases the breath she didn't realize she'd been holding. By the time the weapon is tucked back into the hilt by his waist—she can see it now, she doesn't know how she could've missed it before—she's collapsed to her knees, clutching at her throat. 

"She didn't mean it then," Zoro murmurs tersely. 

The boy shrugs carelessly, his hat tipping to the side, and grabs onto her shaking arm to pull her back onto her feet. He frowns when she collapses back down.  
"It was a warning. Cos' of that." Pointing at the mess of unconscious men in the town center, he nods at the man and grins, just a little bit. 

Zoro half-smirks back. "Shitty warning, if you ask me."

"Maybe," the boy snickers. 

His arms loop around Zoro's neck again, and he smooshes his cheek against his friend's, eyes bright and happy. "When is everyone else gunna get here?" he asks. 

Zoro purses his lips. His gaze flicks over to her a couple times, but he no longer looks angry. Unimpressed, maybe, but otherwise completely impassive. "Robin can find her way here, easy. Usopp's staying on the ship, he says he ain't coming down until it's daytime again. And the cook's busy in the market."

"Nami? Chopper?"

"Chopper's staying with Usopp and Nami. She got grazed."

Something in the boy's face cracks for the briefest moment. "Ah, right. From yesterday, right? Chopper told me to go outside for a bit, since Nami has to rest and I was being noisy." But that disappears quickly, and then there's a sweet curve to his lips. "Let's get her something! Y'know? I always get better INSTANTLY when I eat meat! If we got her some good food she'll be all good in no time!"

"That's only because you're a freak," Zoro snorts—though there's no meanness there. It would sound fond, if she hadn't seen how minacious a person he is. Almost like a criminal.

"Zoro's a freak, too, then," the boy teases back. His chortling instantly cedes to chanting of 'ow, ow, ow,' after Zoro grabs his cheek and pulls, eyebrows twitching all the while. She knows that she's still drunk off fear, but the boy's cheek seems to stretch far beyond what should be possible.  
But it's a blink and you miss it moment, and hardly half a second passes before he's rubbing his face with a petulant sulk. "Mean," he scowls.

"Idiot," Zoro shoots back. There's unmistakable fondness there now, for sure, vague endearment in the lines of his face, in the hard-softness of his gaze.

She isn't sure how she's supposed to feel about that.  
(Maybe it's because she sympathizes.)

There's low chatter for a while, the two talking in hushed tones—(the man's talking quietly, at least, she can hear every word the boy is saying)—when a mild voice cuts into their conversation. 

"Found you," someone giggles.  
The woman is tall, with dark hair and sharp eyes, and it's probably just her imagination—but there seem to be wriggling shadows around her, there one moment; gone the next.

"Robin!" the boy whoops. "You're finally here!"

Zoro grunts in acknowledgement. 

"I see you've done quite a number on the people over there, captain."  
Captain? 

"Yeah!" the boy laughs gleefully, not even fazed by the strange moniker.

Robin nods coolly and clasps her hands together, a hint of amusement flickering at the corner of her lips. "Are you ready to go back now? Sanji's done, right now he's..."  
She closes one eye and then mutters something under her breath, before blinking twice and continuing. "—with Nami in the infirmary. I'd say we should head back now, our dear sharp-shooter's getting anxious."

"Oh," the boy says. "Usopp wants to go on an adventure that badly?"

Robin smiles politely, like she isn't terribly amused. It's only a little obvious, visible in the curve of her mouth, which is just a tad too curvy for a gracious smile. "Yes."

Zoro expels a heavy sigh through his nose, and pulls the boy off of him by the collar. "We better head back then," he mutters, hands tucked back by his sides.  
Then he freezes. 

"Luffy," he murmurs, "—you keep your hands to yourself."

The boy grins at him.  
Impishly. 

"No," Zoro snarls, a hand already palming the hilt of his sword—she can see that he isn't actually grabbing for it, though—"we're never doing this again! No more rubber rockets, dammit! 

The boy makes grabby hands.

But before he can take even one step closer, he pauses, eyes fluttering wide open as if suddenly remembering something.

"Ah! Lady!" the boy exclaims, spinning excitedly towards her, "What were you gunna say about my hat?"

("I think I hav—") Have what? I've seen it before? I think I've seen _you _before.  
What if—what if she's wrong? What would the odds be, anyways, for the same straw hat to show up in her life on two different people, twenty years apart? (What are the odds for two people to be the _same—_)

Close to none, probably. 

Maybe her imagination's run too far today.

"...Nothing, sorry." she says.

She gives him a closed-lip smile in response to his tangible disappointment, hiding a grimace with common courtesy. "I really am sorry, I was mistaken."

"Oh." he says. "Okay then."

He doesn't even spare her another glance as he turns away, Robin and Zoro by his side. She doesn't know where they're going, or if they'll ever meet again.  
(They won't, she decides.)

But then they're gone, another blink-and-you-miss-it moment, and she's left standing alone, in a dark, silent street with street lamps blinking unsteadily around her.  
The crowd had left a while back. 

Maybe she should have too.

She finds his face, (his smile) on a wanted poster weeks after she meets him last. 

It's a wide, beaming, grin, with both his eyes closed and a hand raised in greeting.  
For some reason, it doesn't surprise her.

What does surprise her is how much he's worth. 

_What, _she thinks,_ what's with this amount? At the very most, all he should've gotten was—_

And then she checks the date. 

He is a pirate.  
And he was one long before he ever met her. 

Something curls terribly, wickedly, in her chest.

Wrenching the poster off the wall with a clenched fist, she debates what to do with it.  
Who is he? She had thought about it, maybe entertained the possibility— she had _heard _his name, Zoro had said it—oh,_ the Pirate Hunter—_

But she hadn't believed it. Not really, because he saved her life, saved that old man's life, and he didn't steal or take or kill— how does she know he didn't? How does she know that he hadn't done any of those things, that he's not a crook, a villain, a real _pirate? ___

__She doesn't._ _

__

__And thereupon lies the problem._ _


End file.
